The Back Story

With its most recent cultural roots in the human potential movement of the 1960’s intertwined with its roots back to the discovery of chiropractic in 1895, Today’s Chiropractic Leadership understands one thing above all: Our profession has a quite a story to tell.

From its deductive (and dramatically successful) origins, through its initial development as a healthcare practice, to its suppression by competitors who sought to establish a monopoly on healthcare, to its successful suit against the AMA in a case involving actions that were found to be of a conspiratorial nature. In other words, the MDs fought the DCs, and the DCs won.

People – including chiropractors – need to understand just how hard chiropractors have fought to maintain our healthcare civil liberties by refusing to buckle under the full force of the AMA in their attempt to establish a monopoly on healthcare.

That’s quite a story.

To tell it well, we have to get our facts straight – and Dr. JC Smith is just the man to help us do it.

Take 12 minutes, click on the video below to hear Dr. Guy Riekeman’s interview with Dr. Smith in Part One of the story – an overview of the political and sociological war on chiropractic that continues today.

In the next eight or so minutes, learn more about the Flexner Report and its role in the AMA-led legal war against chiropractic that resulted in thousands of jailed chiropractors – and, with the law of unintended consequences in full force – its eventual positive impact of patient protests and chiropractic licensure.

In the next half-hour, you will learn more about the AMA’s underground defamation efforts – using a media campaign that included advice columnist, Ann Landers – to suppress and demonize chiropractic. Included is the longest anti-trust trial (15 years) in history, Wilk vs. the AMA, that eventually uncovered the AMA’s myriad illegal restraint of trade tactics and resulting in a victory for the chiropractic profession.

In this final segment, hear more about Harvard researcher David Eisenberg, whose initial study, published in USA Today showed 39 million more visits to CAM providers than medical doctors. By 1999, there were 250 million more. These CAM patients are still using medicine (less than 5% rejected medical care altogether) but they want their healthcare system that supports a natural, healthy lifestyle, only resorting to drugs, surgery, or radiation if absolutely necessary.

People who utilize alternative healthcare are among the most educated members of the population – but, still, they are not utilizing chiropractic. This is a result of the “back story,” the many years that chiropractors were under assault by the AMA’s decades-long campaign of disinformation and defamation.

Chiropractic needs YOU to tell the story. Become proficient with the details – and learn how to serve as a healthcare expert in your community. Chiropractic has been shown, at minimum, to be a highly effective safe approach to alleviating back pain and keeping people off dangerously addictive opioids. As Dr. Smith said, “The paradigm shift has already happened, but the media aren’t telling people about it.”